Provided herein are cargo racks for vehicle roofs and related methods, including for such racks that include mechanization for moving the rack between the roof and a position closer to ground level for easier loading and unloading.
Cargo racks designed to mount on vehicle roofs are widely available commercially. Such commercially available roof top racks, when placed on tall vehicles such as large sport utility vehicles, are difficult to load and unload due to their height above the ground. A wide range of patents attempt to make loading and unloading such racks easier. Many of those patents, e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,681,970, 6,015,074, involve various mechanizations based on pivoting the load from roof level to a lower level. U.S. Pat. No. 5,544,796, uses an alternate mechanization wherein the load travels along a track using a roller and track arrangement that keeps the car top load level to the ground through the range of motion. A preferred arrangement in the art is for two main tracks or beams which line up with two matching cross-members that mount to the vehicle roof.
Pivoting mechanizations, if they do not include power actuators, require the user to support the load overhead to a high degree during loading/unloading, inherently limiting the load to what an operator can handle. If they include actuators, the actuator torque required is large, resulting in large and expensive actuation systems. Many of the pivoting mechanizations do not maintain the load parallel to the ground making box type cargo carriers impractical to use. The tracked arrangement in U.S. Pat. No. 5,544,796 limits the need for the user to support the load, but requires a relatively fixed angle between the roof top rails and the side located rails, driving a difficult structural design for the rail to rail transition area. Racks having two parallel rails or beams are expected to be difficult to align for smooth operation free of binding and have the cost associated with two sets of hardware.
The shortcomings in the current racks known in the art are addressed herein.